At least seven newborn babies died in a Medical College in Assam’s Barpeta district in last 24 hours, raising questions about the health infrastructure in the medical colleges of the State.
While the locals allege medical negligence leading to the death of the newborn babies, the doctors in the hospital ruled out medical negligence and said that most of the babies died of birth asphyxia, a critical medical condition resulting from deprivation of oxygen to a newborn infant that lasts long enough during the birth process to cause physical harm, usually to the brain.
Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that all the babies were admitted in the newborn critical care unit of the medical college and hospital and that proper medical care had been given to them.
“They were in sick newborn care unit and proper medical proper attention were given. It is solely the critical nature of the cases that led to death. Two mothers are below 20 years of age,” Sarma said adding that the medical college in Barpeta is witnessing less infant mortality this year comparative to previous years
“These mortalities are related to purely critical nature of the case like age of the mother, birth weight of the baby,” he added.
Principal cum Chief Superintendent of the medical college Dr Dilip Dutta said that most of the babies were born underweight and suffered from a critical condition which we call birth asphyxia.
“Age of some of the mothers were also less like 20 years. There is no negligence on our part but the critical nature of the illness that led to the unfortunate incident,” he said adding that one more baby was in critical condition so far.